Windows XP In Your Pocket 208
BoredStiff writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the Bart PE Builder software utility takes Windows XP and shrinks the OS to your USB flash drive. Besides converting your mini-drive into an emergency boot disk, you can use the utility to load a Web browser, media burning software and more - to have handy anywhere you go. And by the way, it doesn't violate the Windows XP EULA." From the article: "If your PC has a relatively new motherboard, its BIOS will already include the functions necessary to support USB-attached boot media. If so, you need only make the right selections in that BIOS menu to boot from a USB flash drive. Older PCs, on the other hand, won't accept USB drives as valid boot devices. This means a BIOS update that supports USB boot options is necessary. You can find information about where to obtain such updates from your PC's (or motherboard's) user manual, on the driver CD included with the PC (or motherboard) or on the vendor's Website."
or perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:2, Insightful)
OSS is all about choice until one of those choices is provided by Microsoft. I love Slashdot.
Re:or perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
the WindowsPE/Bart PE concept is actually pretty handy for setup and deployment of Windows based systems, as well as a great recovery tool for Windows.
Some might reply "try !insert favorite Linux distribution here!", but as stated earlier, when you need a tool for Windows, this actually works pretty well.
Another concept we have implemented here at my place of employment, is to create a small PE partition at the beginning of the drive.. and then install the actual production OS on the secondary partition. When any issues arise, we can remotely reboot to the first partition and run one of many different build/recovery options.
It is interesting that an older tool such as PE is just now making news in some places.
Re:I know because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pardon me - I suspect you are a FUCKING LIAR - even if you're not currently working for Microsoft. We know everyone who IS working for Microsoft is a FUCKING LIAR, so I'm afraid you're suspect until proven otherwise.
It seems to me YOUR explanation walks a fine line between claiming Bart's PE IS Windows PE and then saying he "reverse engineered" the entire build process.
Well, if the BUILD process is not yours, then the PE is not yours, regardless of its layout. The point of the PE is to enable Windows to run before being installed. If the files are the same, but there was NO build process except "manually" doing this, what difference does it make if the PE layout is the same - whether it was built by a third party app, or manually?
The bottom line is this: a user is taking their own properly licensed files and using a third party application to construct a PE that works the same as Windows PE.
Clearly the files may be the same, but I see no evidence in your post that there is anything there against the EULA - unless the EULA says that a user may not take Windows files from a hard drive and put them on a CD. Is Microsoft's EULA that precise about allowed usage of the product? Does Microsoft claim that a properly licensed end user of Windows cannot take, for example, one of command line executables, put it on a CD, and run it from there? That's ALL that's happening here.
And since you rely on Microsoft's fucking lawyers for that opinion, it's worthless.
This is fucking ridiculous. One more reason to tell Gates to stick Windows up his ass.